How Does A Hero Think

"It was more of a reaction than thinking. I just walked up there and saw people gutting the store and they needed help,” the 36-year-old chef said of his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to keep an angry mob from further smashing the windows of the flagship Bay store on Granville St. in downtown Vancouver after the Stanley Cup final game.

“I just felt it was the right thing to do. It was something I saw happening and I just wanted to stop it. I was pretty angry at that point.”

“Some guy prodded me or tried to lunge at me with a pole. I grabbed onto the pole and I just started pushing the crowd back and that is when I was surrounded and then taken down. After I was down on the ground, some guy came up and bear-sprayed my face.”

Two more guys came to his aid. One spread his arms to protect him and placed his hand on his shoulder, the other joining him despite having his shirt tugged by a young woman who wanted him to leave.

“I couldn’t even open my eyes at that point,” he said. They brought him to police at Howe and W. Georgia Sts.

“I was sitting on the curb,” MacKay said. “People walking by gave me their water bottles so I could rinse off my head. And then my girlfriend picked me up and then we walked home.”